Summary of “The Founder’s Dilemmas” by Noam Wasserman : Control vs. Wealth

It was a Wednesday evening I was watching this YouTube channel called « Harvard Innovation Labs » that gives insight on all of the steps entrepreneurs must take to become successful and also invites some of them to share their secrets. In this particular video, Michael J. Skok — a serial tech entrepreneur for 21 years and also EIR at Harvard- was explaining the roadmap to success as an entrepreneur, he mentioned a book that every founder should read to have an overview of all the dilemmas they get through and whether you end up as rich or king regarding the decisions you take along the journey, alert at that time I wrote the title on my notebook, many days later I read it and was not deceived at all because of the clarity and new knowledge the author gives on this particular subject. The book is called « The Founder’s Dilemmas » by Noam Wasserman and in the following I will try to give a brief summary of it.

Noam Wasserman spent over a decade working with hundreds of founders, collecting and analyzing data on nearly 10,000 founders in the technology and life sciences industries, in the book he explores the experience of Evan Williams, a self-taught Web designer and programmer who created Blogger — one of the first and most popular blogging tools — then developed Odeo — a podcasting platform service- then later co-created Twitter. Evan holds a particular interest because his approach to founding as well as his way of running Blogger and Odeo, this helps to highlight the wide variety of options available to founders. In one case he takes VC (Venture Capital) funding and in another systematically resists it, he hires his friends in one case and pays enormous amount for professionals in another. He battles for the CEO position with his ex-girlfriend in one then gives the reins over to a mere acquaintance in his second startup.

The book’s central message is that founding decisions need to be made by design not by default. Each decision requires the founder to assess multiple options than many founders realize. Often the right decision is by no means obvious, it may even be counterintuitive and in addition it can come with a burdensome cost. Founders need to see past their instincts and their natural propensity for wishful thinking to grasp the full range of options and…